Julio Perez is convinced that the mountains of provisional ballots — which will overwhelmingly be from Democrats rather than from Republicans — will put him ahead of Joe Moreno and into second place behind Tom Daly. If that happens, he’ll probably win in November, and the celebrations of the Daly camp will have been premature. (Please do read that OC Register article by the way. Tefere Gebre, if you want your uncensored remarks published, please contact the Orange Juice Blog!)

If he does make it into the runoff, Julio will have a lot of people to thank — but the biggest thanks of all may have to go to JOBSPAC, the very people who were trying to beat him.

Only one person I know of really knew how to beat Julio Perez — and that was the incumbent he’s trying to replace, the cunning and self-serving Jose Solorio. (Solorio not only hates brave consumer advocates like Perez to pieces, but he may be worried that Perez would be a competitor against him in the race to replace State Senator Lou Correa in 2014. Jose has apparently not yet figured out that he’s not winning that one no matter what.)

Solorio was Julio’s top real behind-the-scenes adversary this campaign season, who as I understand it tried to induce both Santa Ana City Council members Sal Tinajero and Vince Sarmiento into the race to split the Latino vote, before finally succeeding with Michele Martinez. (I don’t know what support Solorio promised her, but he didn’t deliver on most of it, being at heart a Daly man.)

Jose Solorio understood that the way to beat Julio Perez involved two things: (1) massive amounts of Late Independent Expenditures (“LIEs”) and (2) splitting the Latino vote against Tom Daly, the Edgar Winter of Orange County politics. All that mattered was getting someone else into second place; whether it was Martinez or Moreno didn’t matter. Either would do; either would lose in November.

And I have enough respect for Jose Solorio’s brain, if not his heart, to believe that his spirits sank when he saw the mailer that I published here earlier this week, telling Republicans not to “waste their vote” on Joe Moreno.

You see, this was not a race where Daly had to get the most votes. This was a race where Daly had to make sure that the only credible opponent, Julio Perez, did not get the second-most votes. Daly had literally almost a million dollars behind him — he could easily have spared a few votes to make sure that Moreno would outpoll Perez, who was being sliced up by vicious negative LIEs.

"Hi, Jose Solorio here! I'm just using Michele Martinez as a tool to try to beat that energetic workers and consumer advocate Julio Perez. Won't you join me?"

Solorio, a smarter guy, continued to plump for the hapless Michele Martinez to give her a shot at beating Julio — no problem for Solorio there, as Daly would finish first regardless and Martinez wasn’t really competing with votes for Moreno. By pushing Michele, Solorio was creating a second possible route to an anti-Perez victory — he could fire two bullets instead of one.

Daly’s rich corporate funders, though, were treating this as a general election, as if Daly would win outright if he got to 50%. (Hint: that’s not how it works now, plutocrats!) JOBSPAC and its ilk tried to tear down Moreno. In other words, they were hammering Solorio’s better bullet flat.

That “Republicans, Don’t Waste Your Vote!” flyer probably did its job of suppressing Moreno’s vote by at least a percentage point, probably more. Daly could have easily burned 5 to 10% of his vote without suffering at all. All through this campaign, I was afraid that they were going to figure it out and have the guts to try the riskier and counter-intuitive strategy: LIEs for Michele and for Moreno. Happily they didn’t.

I never imagined myself saying this a few months ago, but —thank you, Chevron Inc. and Philip Morris. Thank you for encouraging Republicans to cast wasted votes for Daly rather than critical votes for Joe Moreno. You were stupid exavtly when Julio Perez needed you to be stupid. And, by this time next week or so, when the provisional ballots may have been counted, you may well have made the difference in allowing Julio to get to the runoff despite the massive campaigns against him, by lowering the number of Moreno votes he had to exceed.

For you to have shot yourselves in the foot with all your money would be the sweetest justice of all. Thanks again!

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-retired due to disability, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally runs for office against bad people who would otherwise go unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that.
Deposed as Northern Vice Chair of DPOC in April 2014 (in violation of Roberts Rules) when his anti-corruption and pro-consumer work in Anaheim infuriated the Building Trades and Teamsters in spring 2014, who then worked with the lawless and power-mad DPOC Chair to eliminate his internal oversight.
Expelled from DPOC in October 2018 (in violation of Roberts Rules) for having endorsed Spitzer over Rackauckas -- which needed to be done.
None of his pre-putsch writings ever spoke for the Democratic Party at the local, county, state, national, or galactic level, nor do they now.
One of his daughters co-owns a business offering campaign treasurer services to Democratic candidates and the odd independent. He is very proud of her. He doesn't directly profit from her work and it doesn't affect his coverage. (He does not always favor her clients, though she might hesitate to take one that he truly hated.)
He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.)

I was thinking the same thing. Although it was obvious JobsPAC was trying to suppress the vote for Moreno, I couldn’t really see WHY they would want to do that. Are the very rich also, sometimes, stupid?

Wow, how delusional do you guys have to be? Give it up!! Concede already!! New results keep getting posted and Julio’s percentage keeps staying the same, all the votes keep going to Tom and Joe Moreno. Your predictions for this race were obviously incorrect, just admit it. Tom got the lions share of votes across all demographics, including a majority of Democratic votes. Stop already, Julio is not going to come close. Tell him to take down all his signs too, its getting really annoying and they obviously didn’t work.

Actually that’s not true. Today, Julio’s percentage went up to 18.1%. Hope is slim, but it’s still possible he could overtake Joe. Last I heard there were still “thousands” left to count, and he’s behind less than a thousand.

You raise a good question — or, rather, you would have done so had you raised it as a question rather than hurled an insult because you don’t understand it:

“Can we extrapolate from the early portions of the post-election counting to the later ones?”

And the answer is: no, not really — at least not necessarily. Different types of ballots are counted, in sequence, and may have differently slanted votes.

As I recall, the sequence is:

(1) absentees that arrived in the mail on Monday and Tuesday
(2) absentees that were turned in at the polls on Tuesday
(3) paper ballots filled out at the polls
(4) provisional ballots

The last category, provisional ballots, is where Julio’s advantage should lie. He’ll get a large share of those votes; Moreno will get very few. It may not be enough, but it’s unreasonable to count Julio out yet. I’m not saying that the odds are with him; I’m saying that in this case it truly ain’t over until it’s over.

Hey smartass “reader,” Second day in a row Julio keeps getting closer. Today it’s Julio 19.5% to Joe 21.8%. Difference of 606 votes. Two more days like this and Julio is #2 (and I don’t think Joe will mind that either!) So keep your trap shut, we’ll see what happens.

Greg:
A dead-on analysis. I am glad SOMEONE is exposing Solorio and his slimey, self-serving machinations. I feel almost sad for Michele Martinez, being used so badly by Solorio. Almost, but she should have seen the play EXACTLY as it was.

Greg, what you missed is that the way in which Solorio perpetuated Martinez’s staying in the race, stringing her along with minor alliances that were perceived as significant, like the Latino caucus, which aligned with Michele not because she was latino – but because the Latino caucus is moderate dems, led by Solorio. She got the illusion of support, but little money, which trickled in and kept her in the long enough to be on the ballot.

To describe the support she had as tepid is half accurate: it was calculatedly tepid, holding the illusion of promise. All calculatedly engineered to ensure a white boy represented the biggest latino district in the state. Solorio should be remembered and villified for this by the Latino community – hopefully they will remember it when it comes time to vote in 2014 for the 34th SD. Solorio has already declared for the race – with no money in his coffers. You can see how much money and support he will get from Labor – so he has to continue to prostitute himself to JOBSPAC and other big business interests that have no interest in the 69th – or the 34th – or Latinos in general. The Latino caucus also should have hell to pay.

If jose couldn’t win in the Senate, could Jose run for the Assembly in two years? Meanwhile, if Tom wins he could pad his CalPERS pension, since I think he had 10 years contributing while on with the city of Anaheim.

Would that be a win/win for all. Tom keeps jose seat warm, pads his retirement and now has two behemoth pension packages.

No, Solorio is subject to the pre-Prop 28 law that limits him to six years in the Assembly, period. Daly, if he wins, is subject to Prop 28, meaning that he could serve 12 years in the legislature, divided between Assembly and Senate in any way he could manage.